William Jennings Bryan would have loved television. That’s about all that was missing 100 years ago last month when he delivered the most memorable phrase in American political convention history. In an era when 72 wins and four rings become the stuff of legend, the myth somehow is not so mystical when all of it is live and tucked neatly between commercials for soft drinks and sneakers.
When William Jennings Bryan became a legend, only 20,000 sweating Democrats in the Chicago Coliseum witnessed the event, but an entire nation that neither saw nor heard it became enthralled.
In 1896, Chicago played host to its ninth political convention. Incredibly, Chicago had grown in less than six decades from a village of 4,000 to the nation’s second-largest city with more than 1.5 million residents.
The great fire of 1871 seemed to ignite growth rather than hinder it. The Union Stockyards, opened Christmas Day 1865, employed tens of thousands who stood ankle-deep in blood and offal to slaughter the cattle and hogs that fed a nation already transformed from its agrarian infancy to an industrial youth.
Despite their remarkable ability to endure for nearly 200 years, the Democrats have existed primarily in a state of chaos marked by sporadic periods of success. So it was not surprising that the party was in a mess when it arrived in Chicago in June 1896. Grover Cleveland had been its only successful presidential candidate since 1856 and his second term coincided with the financial panic of 1893 and a depression the following year. On top of that, a drought in the early 1890s had bankrupted many farmers, and the dry, hot summer of 1896 again threatened crops across the Great Plains.
Cleveland was about as unpopular as any incumbent president would be until Herbert Hoover.
The Republicans had just met in St. Louis and nominated handsome, charming William McKinley, the governor of Ohio and a former congressman. They were confident McKinley would take back the White House. But the Republicans of the 1890s were no great shakes, either.
The populist movement of the 1880s was an outgrowth of the frustration over the similarities between the major parties, a complaint echoed again a century later. From the Civil War’s end to the turn of the century, Democrats and Republicans seemed joined in a policy that government should endorse the nation’s expansion, which meant the nation’s industry.
It was the age of robber barons and great labor strife. And in 1896, America was mad. For the first time since the Civil War, it had an issue that would divide the nation through the end of the 20th Century.
The issue was class. The metaphor was “free silver.”
Most people didn’t understand the monetary supply, but “free silver” became the rallying cry of Populists and dozens of other sprouting political parties attacking the Eastern banks and their most cherished customers, the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Carnegies and others of the Gilded Age.
The United States had officially recognized both gold and silver as the basis of its monetary system since 1792, using 16 grains of silver to equal 1 grain of gold. In 1873, the government decided to stop minting silver dollars. At the time, there was no outcry. But in a few years, as America’s population doubled, then threatened to triple by the end of the century, the money supply shrank, driving up interest rates.
This was good news for banks, but bad news for farmers. In the 1870s, discoveries of huge veins of silver in the West made the metal abundant and money cheap. Bad news for bankers. Good news for farmers.
Eastern Republicans and Democrats both insisted on the gold standard. As more silver was used, holders of bank notes began to trade them back to the U.S. Treasury, demanding gold in return. By 1893, the nation’s gold reserve was disappearing. This made bankers like J.P. Morgan nervous. They all felt better when President Cleveland, a staunch defender of the gold standard, replenished the U.S. Treasury with money borrowed from banks at extraordinarily high interest rates.
Using “free silver” as their slogan, Populists won surprising victories in state elections in 1890, 1892 and 1894, almost capturing governor’s offices in several states. Supporters of free silver wanted unlimited coinage of silver, which would increase the money supply and create cheap money, theoretically to benefit debtors, farmers and silver mine owners of the West. Both Republicans and Democrats were forced to take a stand on the issue.
The Democrats’ best hope was to corral the host governor, John P. Altgeld of Illinois, the most influential “free silver” Democrat at the convention.
Altgeld, true to the tradition of Chicago Democrats, had become wealthy through real estate investments and entered politics as a reform judge. But unlike most of his 20th Century successors, many of whom — including judges and governors — went to jail, Altgeld had a strong social conscience, and the plight of the common workers concerned him.
The Chicago Establishment in general and Joseph Medill, editor and publisher of the Tribune, in particular, branded him an anarchist. As the Democrats convened on July 7, 1896, Altgeld was in a position that many Chicago Democrats would strive to emulate in the 20th Century: kingmaker.
But, as the newspapers wrote, there was no king. The proposed party platform’s major plank was free silver. It was radical in every sense, shredding the complicity with which Democrats and Republicans had joined for 20 years to enhance Wall Street and the burgeoning corporate powers. It also was suicidal.
In this nation of unabashed ambition, plenty of men were ready to run on it. The leading contender was “Silver Dick” Bland, a Missouri congressman who had been urging free silver long before it became the Populist battle cry. Sen. Henry Teller of Colorado (who also owned a silver mine), a turncoat Republican, was receiving a lot of Western delegate support, and there was some talk of the fiery 36-year-old orator from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan. The Easterners were trying to drum up support for William Russell, former governor of Massachusetts. The one candidate who everyone would have supported was ineligible. John Peter Altgeld had been born in Germany.
In July 1896, Bryan was hardly a favorite for the nomination; his youth seemed a big negative. But he was a well-known silver champion with a reputation for eloquence, and when the delegates jammed into the huge exposition hall at East 63rd Street and South Harper Avenue, it was Bryan they were waiting to hear.
By pure fortune, it turned out that he would be the final speaker on the silver plank on Thursday, July 9.
Bryan’s speech began, “I come to speak to you in the defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty — the cause of humanity.”
The phrases he had practiced in Congress and the fairgrounds of Omaha, Lincoln and North Platte rolled from his tongue.
“We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in defense of our homes, our families and posterity.” He cast the farmer “who goes forth all morning and toils all day” against the “man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain.” He appealed to the “gold” Democrats of the Eastern cities. “Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.” And he concluded by declaring war on the Republican Party’s insistence on gold. “We shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
The audience was silent. Bryan stood for a moment, his arms extended and his head bowed as though he were upon a cross. He could not understand the silence. After a moment, he turned toward his seat. At that point, the audience understood that his speech had ended and erupted in a wild demonstration of cheering and applause.
The platform and its free-silver plank passed overwhelmingly. That night Bryan’s name and five others were placed in nomination for the presidency.
On Friday, the balloting began.
On the fifth ballot, Altgeld passed. At the end of the roll call, Bryan had 398 votes. Altgeld stood to be recognized. “Illinois casts 48 votes for William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska.” The classic convention stampede was on. When it ended minutes later, Bryan had 652 votes and the nomination. The Democratic Party was split.
The election of 1896 marked a turning point in American campaigns. The Republican Party spent staggering sums of money, far more than had ever gone into a political campaign and more than it would have to spend for another quarter-century. The GOP admitted to spending $3.5 million while Bryan supporters said the total was five times greater. J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. alone gave $500,000. Much of the money went into another campaign innovation, educational literature. The silver issue confused voters. Bryan traveled 18,000 miles and made 600 speeches trying to convince the electorate that to live on the gold standard was to invite further depression.
Although Bryan received more votes than any previous presidential candidate in history, 6.5 million, McKinley got 7.1 million. Despite the prairie roots of the Populist movement, the Republicans won Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota. McKinley carried all the northern industrial states, including Illinois. The era of close presidential races was over.
The Bryan nomination put Democrats at an electoral disadvantage in three subsequent presidential contests, but ultimately their advocacy of the common man created a powerful political force. Besides, Bryan wasn’t the worst candidate to come out of Chicago — only the worst until 1920.
The 1920 Republican convention turned out to be the most famous of all. It did not have great impact on American history, but it did have consequences. It was the convention of the “smoke-filled room.”
And, like much of history involving politicians who always are more concerned with image than reality, it was a myth.
But there was plenty of fact to embellish it. The first fact was Warren G. Harding, the most handsome president who ever stayed awake in the White House. Harding may not have been America’s worst chief executive, but he gets a lot of votes. If only Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt had been primarily known as products of “smoke-filled room” conventions, the phrase might have been accepted more kindly. But it was Harding whose administration was stained by scandal and whose inner circle contained some of the most corrupt men ever to stroll the White House.
One of them was Harry Daugherty, the chief mythmaker. On Feb. 21, 1920, a New York Times reporter stopped Daugherty to ask if Harding had a chance at the Republican nomination.
“About 11 minutes after two on Friday morning at the convention, when 15 or 20 men, somewhat weary, are sitting around a table, one of them will say, `Who will we nominate?’ At that decisive time, the friends of Harding can suggest him and can afford to abide by the result.” There is some historical dispute whether these were Daugherty’s words or the invention of a reporter who got Daugherty to agree. But that was the quote that everyone read. And that is precisely what seemed to happen. But not exactly.
There were others who added to the lore. Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah during one recess told a reporter, “There’s going to be a deadlock and we’ll have to work out some solution.” And there was the myth of the dark horse, that no one had ever heard of Warren Harding, that he was created by those men sitting in the smoke-filled room.
Harding, in fact, was rated early in 1920 just behind the front-runners for the Republican nomination. Americans were fed up with Woodrow Wilson’s war and Wilson’s failure to bring the United States into his League of Nations, so Republicans expected an easy victory in 1920.
Chicago wasn’t really talking about Harding’s chances that fall. Most people were still in shock over the 1919 World Series when their beloved, unbeatable White Sox had lost to Cincinnati. (Imagine if the 1996 Bulls had lost to Seattle.) Chicagoans also were busy discovering speakeasies and blind pigs where they could illegally drink whiskey and beer provided by a young Alphonse Capone.
The Republican platform of 1920, outside of condemning Wilson’s League of Nations, offered nothing that would upset anyone. A Democrat could have run on it. The mystery was which Republican would, because they all hated each other.
Another myth of the 1920 convention was that a cabal of senators ran everything. This group — Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania, Arthur Watson of Indiana, Frank Brandegee of Connecticut and others — was hoping to have the final word (each privately hoping he might be the nominee).
Supporting the myth was the selection of Lodge as the convention keynote speaker and permanent chairman. The would-be kingmakers realized their first job was to stop the front-runners. On the first ballot taken at the Coliseum on Friday, June 11, Harding was sixth.
After three more ballots on Friday, no one was near the 493 needed for nomination.
That was the night of the smoke-filled room or, in reality, smoke-filled rooms. They were in suites 408-410 at the Blackstone Hotel and had been reserved by Col. George Harvey, the conservative publisher of Harper’s Weekly magazine, who at times had been a supporter of Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft and Wilson, and who, like every other person at the convention, fancied himself a kingmaker.
In Harvey’s rooms at the Blackstone, the Senate cabal smoked and talked and tried to figure out what was best for them. They wanted someone who would take orders, who would restore government to them. They wanted a weak president and a strong legislative branch.
Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge was rejected by Lodge. Gov. Henry Allen of Kansas was too progressive.
Then there was Harding. There was nothing to say against him. He would be as compliant in the White House as he had been in the Senate.
On the fifth ballot, the first on Saturday, Harding moved up to fourth place.
Harding continued to pick up strength on the next three ballots. No one else was showing any new support. The convention was ready to stampede for Harding.
The other candidates’ forces begged for a recess to see if any deal could be worked out. The Senate ringleaders wanted a recess to invent a way to stop Harding and put their choice in as the nominee. Lodge called a recess. He was urged to recess until Monday, but many of the delegates did not have money to spend the weekend and others were so uninvolved, they wanted to leave Chicago and its $1 cocktails and 25-cent beers.
The ninth ballot showed Harding pulling away with 374 1/2 votes. The 10th ballot was a formality as the Southern states joined the bandwagon and Pennsylvania finally switched to Harding, who was nominated with 692 1/2 votes.
As further proof that the senators who were thought to control everything actually controlled nothing, Coolidge was nominated for vice president, a most in 1923 elevated “Silent Cal” to the presidency that neither Lodge nor his equally ambitious progeny would ever achieve.
Harding campaigned on a return to “normalcy,” which the nation clearly wanted since it gave him one of the biggest landslide victories in history over another Ohioan, newspaper owner John Cox, the Democratic candidate. Women voted for the first time, but only in cities like Chicago did a lot of them vote. And they voted just about the same way men did, a presidential election phenomenon that has held throughout the century.
(THE SERIES)
SUNDAY: 1860
Favorite son Abraham Lincoln becomes the man to save the Union.
MONDAY: 1896/1920
Passionate speeches and smoke-filled rooms.
TUESDAY: 1932
Franklin Roosevelt displays a mastery of convention tactics.
WEDNESDAY: 1952
Television puts voters in the middle of the action.
THURSDAY: 1968
A tumultuous convention marks the end of political machine power.
FRIDAY: 1996
Powerbrokers give way to media spinmeisters.